The present invention relates generally to telecommunication systems and more specifically to a system and method for converting and transferring data in a telecommunications system.
The amount of data communicated through networks, such as the Internet, is increasing dramatically. To meet the increased demand for network bandwidth, different data formats have been developed to communicate data through networks. Examples of different formats include Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH), DS3/E3, Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and the like.
Information is transmitted through the network in frames of data, which may also be referred to as packets or cells of data. One difference among the various formats is the general size of a transmitted frame of data and the speed in which the frame of data is transmitted. Also, the different formats may transmit frames of data in a variable-length or fixed-length format.
A telecommunications device, such as an aggregator, is used to aggregate data transmitted in the different formats. Because each of the different formats requires a different port type to connect telecommunications devices to the network, the telecommunications device requires a different port type for each format received at the telecommunications device.
To address the problem of receiving and transmitting data that require different ports, industry standard interfaces, such as Utopia/Packet over Sonet II (POSII) and Utopia/Packet over Sonet III (POSIII), have been developed to standardize interfaces for telecommunications devices. A telecommunications device may then use the standard interface to receive data for processing in the telecommunications device's processor.
Typically, the telecommunications device includes a port interface module that extracts data and provides the traffic directly to the network processor through the industry standard interface. The port interface module extracts the data in the format the data was received. Thus, if the data received is in a variable-length format, the data is extracted in the variable-length format and directly sent to the processor in the variable-length format. If the data was in a fixed-length format, the data is extracted in the fixed-length format and directly sent to the processor in the fixed-length format. Because data is sent directly to the network processor from the port interface module, the network processor must determine the format the data is in and process the data accordingly. Thus, the network processor uses time and computing power to analyze the data's format.